beauty, grace, and expression, of which, in this school, he may be said to have set the example. It would appear that he continued to employ his talents to an extreme old age, there remaining, in the select gallery of Santa Giustina, at Padua, one of his Madonnas, painted in 1516.[29] Such figures, together with those of the Dead Christ, are the most frequent paintings of his hand that we meet with. Should any one, not content with the commendations I have bestowed, feel inclined to prefer a Bellini to a Raffaello, because he was his superior in architectural design, let him consult the opinion of Boschini, p. 28, of his _Carta da Navigare_, but let him recollect that the same writer possesses nothing of the poet beyond the measure of the verse, and the exaggeration of his praises. The name of Giovanni ought not to go down unaccompanied by that of his brother Gentile, who preceded him, alike in the period of his birth and of his death. Though living apart, in regard to family, they were of congenial mind and disposition, esteeming one another as friends and brethren, mutually encouraging and respecting each other, as superior in merit. But in Giovanni this was modesty, in Gentile only truth. For the latter had a more confined genius; but by diligence, that sometimes compensates the neglect of nature, he was enabled to attain an honourable station among his contemporaries. He was employed by the republic upon an equal footing with his brother, to adorn the hall of the great council; and when the Grand Turk sent to Venice in search of an eminent portrait painter, he was commissioned by the senate to go to Constantinople, where in the exercise of his profession he added glory to the Venetian name. Besides his works in painting, he there struck a fine medallion for Mahomet II., bearing the head of the emperor, with three crowns on the reverse; a rare work, of which, however, I learn there is a specimen in possession of his Excellency, Theodore Corer. However inferior we are to consider him to his brother, and tenacious of that ancient harshness in many of his works, there are still several of a more beautiful description, such as his histories of the Holy Cross at San Giovanni, and the Preaching of S. Mark, at the college of that saint; a piece, which, placed near that of a Paris Bordone, does no discredit to its author. He shews himself a faithful copyist, inasmuch as every thing he remarked in a concourse of people, is faithfully pourtrayed. The features of the audience, and the peculiar conformations of the body are as diversified as we see them in nature, including even instances of deformity, into which through her own general laws, nature is known to fall; and we are thus presented with caricatures, with bald, and lean, and pursy, and, what is more remarkable, the auditors of S. Mark are drawn without regard to times, in the costume of Venetians or of Turks. Yet from its exact imitation of the truth, its arrangement,